


tales of an overthinking brain

by alwayslimerent



Category: Fiction - Fandom, Short Stories - Fandom, surrealist fiction
Genre: Fiction, Other, Short Stories, Surreal, surrealist fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 05:00:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17522405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwayslimerent/pseuds/alwayslimerent
Summary: a collection of short stories





	1. "The Ticket"

I guess it was a sunny, suburban area. I was stuck in a line that promised great fortune. I didn't know what it was, I was kind of apathetic as all the other girls were, but I guess the blind hope kept me going. The line seemed to last forever, like I was at the DMV. I remembered all my times at the DMV, one of those times were me failing my permit test and I walked out, pissed because it was the second time and I felt so stupid. That looked like it happened to the girl who just left the line a second ago, interrupting my thoughts. Her ice cold blue eyes were stinging with irritation. She left with her friends. As she walked out the door, the lights flickered a deep cherry red. 

The girl in front of me was on her phone, laughing obnoxiously and her high-pitched teenage voice seemed to vibrate off the walls into my eardrums. I still had no clue why I was in this line. Why I was even going to waste my time. That's when the camera flashes almost blinded me. The girl in front of me, tall, dirty blonde hair that seemed to wave with the air of confusion surrounding me, was smiling wider than the moon, posing like on the red carpet. Then came in another camera man. And another one.  _And another one._ Soon enough, the whole room was filled with them, as she kept rapidly laughing and twirling like a manic ballerina. 

 _"Look at me"_ I heard her whisper vibrate in my eardrums.  _"Look at how happy and in love-"_

A man in a golden cloak grabbed her wrist and showed her the way out. Her feet were bloody from walking on so many crushed diamonds that I don't remember where they came from. I saw her lipstick starting to show on her teeth as she cried black tears and started banging on the door. 

The line wasn't getting shorter. It was getting longer. It seemed to stop for what seemed like years.  _What was I even in line for?_

I thought of the woman with the cards from the other day. I still had the tickt number she gave me in the pocket of my jeans, along with the white rose she gave me. I tried to find so many other girls with flowers, and none of them had a single petal. One girl was shredding her ticket number. Another girl had ticket numbers of various colors, showing them to her friends. I remembered the woman's words.  _"Do not use this ticket. Cherish it."_

Was it a test? The ticket looked like it had been run down, as if used bunches of times. It was frayed upon the edges, the ink on the number was starting to fade, and it looked as if it had been through various types of weather conditions. I even saw aburn mark on the upper right corner.  _What the hell was I supposed to do with this ticket?_

One girl got tired of waiting, so she left, throwing her ticket in the trash. Another, I guess the silence of the room got to her ears - which made them start to bleed. So, she walked out.

That's when the lights went out. I saw a girl in a mask leave the line. She looked right at me, and her eyes, regardless if I could even see them, were like black beads of nohingness. She almost looked like a demon.

 _Were they after me?_ I felt her eyes glancing at my soul, and I wanted them out. I felt a pit in my stomach. 

The ink on my jacket got darker. As if the ticket wanted me to know that the line was getting shorter, that my journey of wondering what the hell was all of this was about to be over.

So many of these girls, I started to notice, were juvenile. They had caked faces, lipstick on their teeth, drugstore perfume and hairspray that was starting to give me a migraine. It started to rain outside. When I opened my eyes after trying to get rid of my migraine, all of the girls were gone. I looked in my hand, seeing the ticket. The middle of the ticket was burning as I got an ear-piercing ringing that I couldn't stop. It was the ringing that grew low in your body and slowly made its way to your head, like on an airplane. It started to hurt to breathe. I couldn't even cry from the pain becuase I was scared my tears were going to float away to oblivion. 

The ticket started to have what appeared to be a bullet hole in it.  _"Do not use this ticket. Cherish it."_ I kept hearing the woman's voice along with the ringing and pouring of the rain. i heard faint music also, that tied the misery of it all together the same way you'd tie a dove's wings so it can't fly. Within the happiest notes of melancholy getting louder, a tear shed my eye. 

Then came the ticking. The ticking grew louder, as the juvenile sobs, screams, and god-awful obnoxious laughs of all the girls in line started to dance all around me. All i had besides this ticket, slowly deteriorating in my hand, was this rose, ivory as snow.

Once there was silence, there was a man in a black robe with a black leather glove. There seemed to be a light, almost halo-like that shone upon him. He led me to a door that had a garden. Once i showed him my ticket, he grew silent. 

"What do you see in there?" he asked.

"What do  _you_ see?" I asked, wondering if this was all a trick. I was not new to those. 

The only other man that I saw in there, was wearing a green robe. He took a long sip of his drink that almost sparkled in the light shining from the garden through the door. "One saw a bed. Another saw a bank. The next saw a stage and a parade."

"One saw the devil, and the other saw a chess game." The man in the dark cloak said.

"I see a garden." I whispered. "It's beautiful - " 

"That's why you have this." The man in the green cloak pointed to my rose.  _"Nobody's ever had a rose before."_

When I walked in the garden, I knew why I had the ticket. I was stuck in a line that promised me great fortune. A fortune that no endorphins or dollars or numbers can bring. The kind of fortune only your soul can explain. 

And as I laid in the meadows of the garden, I wondered, how can use such a beautiful thing?

Then I realized, that's not what the others saw. What I saw, was paradise. And that paradise I was going to cherish. 


	2. "From The Fires of Ransom"

**December 1984**

Coming home was always a dread. Dreadful to his brain, dreadful to his lungs, and dreadful to his hard-working hands. The snowstorm had enveloped him in the house that night. That god-awfully normal house in the middle of nowhere. He turned on the TV only for the news to be drowned out by his thoughts and constant worries over mundane things. He opened a beer. And another one. And another one. Soon enough, the room was making him dizzy. But then again, the house made him dizzy even when he was sober. 

His wife took her keys and her laundry and left because of this. He still had her lipstick stains on his pillowcase and refused to wash them because they still had the scent of her perfume. His son's room was still a mess, scattered with wooden blocks and toy cars and board games, just as if he was at school. The wooden walls were insulated enough to keep him warm from the snowstorm, but nothing could keep him from the coldness of his own mind. He was left in drunken confusion. 

That's when all the lightbulbs in his lamps broke at once. He felt as though the man on the TV was watching him, not just telling the news. He felt the cars passing by were only passing to see the spectacle of his entrapment, he felt God laughing at him as if he were naked under a microscope, a spectacle of vulnerability under the influence.

The doorknob to the outdoors was hot. It almost burnt his hand, from how tightly and curiously he gripped it. Through the peephole, he saw a fire amongst the snow. He opened the door to a huge fire, almost like a bonfire. Surrounding that flame were people in black cloaks circling the fire, holding hands. As he walked towards the silent group, a dove flew out of the fire, as if it was released from a cage, from captivity. The tallest man in the circle grabbed his wrist.

The cloaked man said "Show us you're ready for us". The man had no clue what he was talking about. He just wanted whatever this was to stop, especially in his front lawn. "Or are you ready to join us?"

"What are you even talking about?" the man wiped sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his red flannel. 

Then, at a glance, he saw a strand of blonde hair underneath one of the people's cloaks. The person looked up.  _It was her._ He couldn't believe his eyes.

"Pay no mind to her, my friend." The man in the cloak chuckled. "She's here to do our good work - to cover our tracks with praise."

 _Was this a dream?_ He thought. He hoped to God it was. Then, he would have her back. He could have his son back. He could finally put down the bottle. He knew what came out of that bottle - and it ws nothing that would still end in him having them. 

"Was this what you needed?" Smoke from the fire got to the man's eyes and made them watery, as the cloaked man raised the man's bottle in front of his naive eyes.  _How the hell did he even get the bottle? It was in the house._ "We have all of this, my friend. We have so much you'll see stars and be speaking in tongues until you're gray. You just have to swear you'll join us." He saw the people under the cloaks. One of them was so old the man was suprised he was still alive. Another was a young boy whose tear shed his reddened cheeks. He was shaking like a leaf with terror. Another was a very tall yet malnourished boy with eyes so grey you'd think he was blind. And then there was the other boy. The boy he was terrified to admit to himself that he  _knew_ who he was. It was  _him._ With  _her._ Maybe they conspired. Maybe she was in this the entire time and it got to him. Maybe she took him away and that god-forsaken boy has no choice. He'll never know the truth. 

"What happens exactly if I join you?" The man inquired.

"Eternity. An eternal hand there at your every wish. Every desire."

"At what cost?"

That's when the boy - his love, his light, his hope, was thrown in the flames, and left there to burn.

Shock encompassed him to a paint where the man couldn't scream. He could only shiver and watch as his boy said goodbye.

She, afterwards, had his ashes in a dustpan and swifted them away into the wilderness. She looked robotic. 

"Join us. Or you will be sorry."

That's when the man brought all of his bottles into the fire. He threw them in the flames one by one as the fire grew into something that could be a home for the frost on the logs. It grew taller than the cloaked people. 

"I'm not sorry," The man shrieked with grief and terror. He couldn't handle the betrayal that she had on him. The treachery. She was a snake, of the most venomous kind. And he was innocent and pure and still had such a ways to go. A beautiful life - 

That's when the man heard the gunshots."

" _Please -"_ He begged.  _"Don't ever let me hear that sound ever again."_

He couldn't take it. She was watching him, not even blinking. Her eyes were seeping into his soul through the flames. 

He couldn't take it. 

He jumped into the flames. He saw doves flying from the fires into the skies.

 

When the man opened his eyes, the sun shone through the curtains. He heard a knock at the door. She was sleeping, her lipstick stains still fresh on the pillowcase. He was sleeping as well, his toys still scattered on the floor. 

He smelled sulfur. 

When he opened the door, a young boy in a black hoodie was silent as he gave him a pamphlet. The man watched the boy leave and walk to the next house, without saying anything. 

But the boy kept walking, skipping all of the other houses. He found a joint that he realized the boy had put in the palm of his hand. 

 _But he's so young -_ the man thought.  _How could he even know what that even was?_

He was about to light his joint, when he passed his room. 

Before he kissed him good morning, he saw the excrutiating burn marks all over his body. He looked in the mirror. They were on his body too.


	3. "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"

            As the words were whispered in Edwin's ears, his face grew ghostly white and his cheeks started to tingle. None of the others knew what to do. They had already filmed a vast number of takes, and this was the final one, no exceptions. Judy was getting her makeup touched up. She had no clue, either. Edwin had his head in his hands as he searched in panic trying to think. None of the others had any clue. He shouldn't have been treated so horribly. After all, he was a cast member just as much as Judy, Ray, Bert, and Jack. Some say he was in love with Judy. He knew someone who gleamed with such glimmering beauty could never love someone like him. He had no choice. Edwin hurried to the the prop closet. He saw that the rope was unwound. He tried his best not to even look at where the ends of the rope were jagged, and where they had been snipped, as he was denying the gruesome truth. Edwin didn't know how to say the news. The words themselves were so devastating, they were lost in the bottomless pit of his gut. 

             "We're rolling!" The cameraman yelled. The silence was almost like a curse that grew around the room. Edwin couldn't get him off the set. It was too late. The camera was going to capture him swinging lifelessly and hopelessly, to and fro, from a tree. 

            Judy and the others were singing. The cheerful and sweetly sung music filled the room with symphonies that could only bring smiles. Only Edwin knew what frightening scene of tragedy was being displayed behind them. 

            As Judy turned her head to look at Ray, she noticed he tripped getting up to walk the _"yellow brick road"._ She noticed his face of sheer terror behind the makeup and the joyful tune. His grip on her arm was so tight, it could have cut off her circulation. She wondered what he was so afraid of, what he was hiding. She quickly looked behind her shoulder. The life left her eyes as she stared with fright at the camera lens. She almost forgot the words to the song. She felt her knees get weak, like rubber. Judy and Ray held onto each other for dear life, as the image of the hanging munchkin from the limbs burned in their brains every time they closed their eyes. 

          Edwin only had one plan he could think of. But the plan made him sick to his stomach. He opened the gates to the birds. Golden pheasants, a South African toucan, an African crane, and so many others. The birds would have to mask everything. For they had already seen and captured too much. 

 


End file.
